SD659.1. Edmund Henry Barker to Hugh Stuart Boyd
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 2.
Thetford
June 20, 1828.
“At your desire I have looked over the Essay on Mind as well as I could. It is a prodigy of learning & poetical talent for a Lady of eighteen. Or rather, it is Pope himself visiting once more ‘the glimpses of the moon’ without at all ‘making night horrible.’ But you forget that it is beyond my criticism. The precocity of the Ladies, in these days, is to me a problem more puzzling than any that has occurred to me in metaphysics: they will beat us, (that is, you & me, & all the wearers of trousers,) out of the field; & our being already reduced to the state we are in, is a sign of what will be,”
“Sending Greek quotations, by a Lady, to me, is like describing a battle to a General, who had run away. It is lucky for you that I never ran away from Greek, who, doubtless, fearing to be killed or wounded, has wisely kept out of my way.”
“I have perused with real wonder the Poem of Miss Barrett: although I cannot at all attempt to do justice to its merits. The turn of thought & expression, as well as the versification, are so identically those of Pope, that, if he were alive, his fair double & he would find themselves in the predicament of the two twins, & each would mistake himself for the other. Miss Barrett has proved the truth of the Coachman’s retort upon the bard of Twickenham, namely—‘’Twere easier to make a new one than to mend the old.’”
Extract from a Letter of John Fearn Esqr. dated 64 Torrington-Square, London. He is a celebrated, & is now the most celebrated, Metaphysician in England, Scotland, or Ireland. Yet he was formerly a Captain or Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, & then the Captain of an East-Indiaman. He is a considerable contributor to my Parriana, & there I have given an exact list of his writings.
E. H. Barker
Address, on integral page: H. S. Boyd Esqr. / Malvern / Worcestershire.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
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